The present invention relates generally to communication systems, and more particularly to a method for sending a response from a called phone to a calling phone.
In current wireless communication systems, when a call request is received for a wireless phone, the wireless phone is located and sent a paging message. If the user of the wireless phone is near the wireless phone and has the phone turned on, he can answer the call request, thereby completing the call on the call path requested by the communication system.
There are times when a user of a wireless phone may receive a call request at a time or in a location in which the user cannot conveniently answer the call request but would like to communicate with the calling party. For example, the user may be in a meeting or in a court room. In these situations, the user has to either answer the call, which is an intrusion, or not answer the call, which can lead to a missed opportunity to communicate with the calling party.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and communication system for allowing a user to communicate with a calling party without answering the call request and establishing a call path between the calling phone and the called phone.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and communication system for a user of a called phone to communicate with a calling party without answering a call request from the calling party. The response is preferably a data response that can be sent directly from the called phone to the calling phone or can be a data response that is converted to voice (speech) by a server if the calling phone is not capable of receiving data communications. The present invention also contemplates the sending of a response data message from the calling phone to the called phone in response to the data message received at the calling phone from the called phone. This response message can be a data message that is sent directly from the calling phone to the called phone, or can be a voice message that is sent from the calling phone to a server that converts the message to a data message and forwards the response data message to the called phone.
The invention works as follows. A calling phone sends a call request to a called phone. The call request is a request to establish a communication between the called phone and the calling phone on a call path. Upon receiving the call request, a user of the called phone decides not to answer the call in the usual manner. Rather, the called phone sends a response message to the calling phone, without answering the call request, which would have established a call path between the called phone and the calling phone. In this manner, a message can be sent to the calling phone without completing the call request. The user of the called phone may be in a setting that is not conducive to completing and carrying on a conversation, such as a court room, but may want to communicate a message to the calling phone.
The called phone responds to the call request with a data message. This message is sent to the calling phone without completing the call, and therefore the call path is not established. If the calling phone is data capable, the data message is preferably sent directly to the calling phone. If the calling phone is not data capable, the data message is converted to a voice (speech) message by a server, which sends the converted voice message to the calling phone. The server can be sent the message intentionally by the called phone, or can intercept the data message intended for the calling phone, convert it to a voice message, and then forward the converted voice message to the calling phone. Alternately, the user may be engaged in a current conversation when the call request arrives.
The calling phone can respond to the data message with a data message of its own. If the calling phone is data capable, the calling phone can send a data message directly to the called phone. If the data message is not data capable, it can send a voice message to a server (which may or may not be the server that performs the data-to-speech conversion), which translates the voice message to a data message. This data message is then sent to the called phone.
Thus, the present invention provides a method and communication system for allowing a user to communicate with a calling party without answering a call request from the calling party. In this manner, communication can occur between a calling phone and a called phone without completing the call path between the two phones.